


Immanence

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-14 17:15:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kink meme fill maybe :)  Drift witnesses an ancient Cybertronian ceremony and is...overwhelmed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

NC-17  
IDW  
Drift/Wing, Dai Atlas, Axe  
sticky  
sorta maybe kinda a kink meme fill (the first part) [here. ](http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/10462.html?thread=11667934#t11667934)

“You look ridiculous,” Drift glowered, arms folded across his chassis, slumped in a corner while a gaggle of mechs bustled around Wing.Or what used to be Wing, but was now Wing covered in swirls and dots of paint, and gold, bejeweled wing-stalls that traced over his outspread wings. A mech gestured Wing to bend down, lifting an equally ornate gold wire coronet to Wing’s head.

Wing laughed. “Probably so! It is the ritual, though. Besides.”He shifted his stance and jewels dangling from the wing stalls clattered and tinkled, “it’s fun.”

One of the mechs around Wing shot Drift a look. Yeah, he knew that look, remembered that sort of supercilious sneer from the few times he’d ventured above the gutters.He sneered back.

“Ah lad,” Axe boomed from the doorway, where he’d been watching, “Wait till you see him in the light.”The large mech grinned, unfazed by Drift’s dark look.“Wing, we’re almost ready for you.”

Wing nodded, setting off another tinkling cascade of sound. “You’ll show Drift around?”

Great. So he was going to be handed off for this stupid pageant like some burden. Wonderful. He’d planned on taking advantage of the whole bustle to try to find a way out of the city, but with Axe following him around?

“I don’t need him,” he blurted, just as Axe stepped closer, clapping a hand on Drift’s shoulder. “I’d be glad to.”

The mechs around Wing stepped back, each of them giving a sort of space where they could admire their handiwork.Every inch of Wing’s armor was decorated, somehow, either with whorls of gold and silver paint or set with flat-backed gems or wrapped with wire. He was almost unrecognizable, except for that bright smile, the golden glow of his optics as he stepped out of their circle and moved toward Drift. “I hope you enjoy it. It’s one of the ancient rituals of Cybertron, part of our history.” He stressed the pronoun ‘our’.

Drift’s optics flicked to the side. “Don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Ah lad,” Axe said, chuckling, “Life is so much easier when you stop making it hard for yourself.”

[***]

“Wing was so excited that you’d come to this, Drift.”Axe reached over his shoulder, snagging two small green-filled vials from a passing server. He pressed it into Drift’s hand.

“Don’t have much choice,” Drift said, frowning sourly into the small glass.

Axe laughed, as though it were a joke. “Don’t ever tell him I told, but he wants you to be a little impressed.”

Impressed? Right. All this wealth and splendor and for what? One day a year. One big pageant thing.

Axe caught him looking around, and his face must have been unguarded and bitter. “With him, Drift.”

“Me.” Flat disbelief. Were they talking about the same Wing? The one who threw Drift around like a sack of old cogs every day for fun?

Axe gave a strange, lopsided smile, and held his vial out for a toast. “He wants you to find him beautiful, Drift.”

Drift’s bitterness crumbled, and he stood, for a long moment, clutching his glass, his spark giving a sharp, sudden pang.Wing was.It wasn’t even up for debate. Even bitter and hardened as Drift was, he wasn’t entirely blind.

He ducked his head after a moment, feeling the weight of Axe’s gaze on him, and took a sip from the green liquid. It was tart and sharp, sliding down like quicksilver. He looked up to Axe’s tolerant, half-sided smile, and a pat on his shoulder that he would have shaken off if a burst of music hadn’t interrupted.

“Drink up,” Axe said, swallowing his own in one neat little gulp, reaching out for Drift’s glass.Drift was already feeling it, a warm sort of glow spreading through his chassis, as though his spark was heating.Mechs around them were doing the same, handing the glasses back to smaller passing ground mechs holding trays, slicing deftly through the crowds.

“Do you know the story?” Axe leaned over, his gold crest catching in the light, as the first banners of the procession moved in front of them, glittering and flapping.

Drift shook his head, blinking. Whatever was in that green glass was…strong.He had no idea what Axe was even talking about, but he really didn’t want to ask right now. He just wanted his head to stop spinning.

Axe’s hand descended on his shoulder, companionably. “It’s the story of our making, our descent from Primus.”

“The guiding hand,” Drift managed, steadying himself.He could see five mechs ascending a dais, cloaked in some bright fabric. He knew this story. Bits of it, anyway, little scraps that desperate soldiers murmured when they believed faith would save them.

Axe beamed at him, fingers curling over his spaulder.“Ours is a bit different from what you might know.”He gestured as Dai Atlas, his body glistening iridescent silver and gold, in the part of Primus.Drift shrugged, his head spinning again, and everything seemed to swirl into a blur of noise and color, Axe’s voice a steadying drone beside him.

Until Wing stepped forward, throwing off his cloak.

And he didn’t look ridiculous any more.He looked….

…resplendent. Drift had heard the word somewhere, ages ago probably in one of Megatron’s speeches, but he’d never really seen it until today. Wing seemed to be the only thing in focus, bright white and so dazzling that it hurt to look at him, even though Drift could not tear his gaze away.

Mortilus, he figured, or maybe Axe told him. Somehow, the word seeped to his awareness. But Mortilus was…

And as he watched, the Knights on the stage began an intricate pantomime, swords flashing in the light, as the others lunged at Wing.

Wing countered easily, and Drift, for the first time, got to see the jet’s skill exercised on someone else. And he was so graceful, each movement precise and compact, that it took Drift’s breath away.

Even when he ‘fell’ in the fight, Mortilus, defeated, it was beautiful, his body collapsing in a shimmer of light and color.

“In our version,” Axe whispered, his EM field tingling against Drift’s side, “Mortilus, the death bringer, having suffered his own demesne, is reborn.”As Drift watched, Wing stirred on the dais, jewels ringing in the almost silence of the audience, rapt with belief.“The three fought in an intricate dance in life, and as the others give their lives for us—Epistemus our brain modules, Adaptus our transformation cog, Mortilus became….”

“The spark.”Knowledge, Change and the power of life and death. It was some parable he could barely get his mind around.

Wing was blinding, in the bright light, the paint on his armor seeming to shimmer alive, and Drift seemed to feel the same shivering movement over his spark.“He’s….” He spread his hands, wordless. He should want to leave, he should deride this ceremony for being venal and ludicrous, garish and showy and stupid, but instead, all he could think of was what it might be to be close to Wing right now, like a creature longing to be too near a sun.

“I think,” Axe said, leaning over, his voice quiet and conspiratorial, “he’d like it if you told him that.” And Axe stepped away into the crowd, leaving Drift reeling with indecision.

[***]

He stumbled toward the stage, clumsy with the intoxicant and his own awkwardness. He had no idea what he was going to do, other than ‘find Wing’ and be near him somehow.The crowd seemed not to notice him and he had a fleeting thought that he should be moving the other way, toward the fringes, to find an exit, but that thought was half-hearted and black and dry, while the thought of Wing was spark-full and rich and lush.

“Wing,” he murmured, just to hear the sound of the word, feel the shape of it in his vocalizer.“Wing.”

A mech caught him as he tripped over another’s foot, pulling him back to his feet. “Wing?” the mech echoed, his optics chasing down Drift’s frame, flaring as he recognized the Decepticon logo. “Yes. I’ll fetch him.”The mech guided him up a small rise of stairs, into a shadowy vestibule. “Wait here.”

Drift nodded, limply, settling himself in the quiet room. Away from the noise and bustle of the crowd, the worst of the lightheadedness seemed to recede, but the desire, the longing for Wing, didn’t, burning, if anything, sharper and clearer.

The room smelled of clean oil and something sweet, the silence a welcome sort of muffling, that even dampened his footsteps as he shifted around the small space, barely large enough to move. It reminded him of a prison cell, but vaguely not. Nothing felt trapped here, confined.Instead it felt safe and small and close, the kind of place he’d have killed for in the gutters.

“Drift?” A voice behind him, in the doorway. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Wing.Even his voice seemed magnificent, now, some trick of acoustics or effect of the drink, but when Drift turned, Wing was there, resplendent in his jewelry that Drift had called ‘ridiculous’, ornate and decorated in paint and jewels. It was too much—Wing was beautiful enough without those gewgaws—but the excess seemed to point to that fact of how unnecessary any of it was.

He didn’t’ trust himself to words, barely trusting himself to walk, but his feet guided him, sure and steady like something meant to be, and he closed the small distance between them, pulling Wing into a nearly frantic kiss.

There was a startled ‘oh!’ from the jet, which parted his mouthplates, the sound becoming just a note of longing between them. Drift wanted this as he’d wanted nothing else in his life: his hands stroked over Wing’s body, almost maddened by the intricate jewelry, the brush of a jeweled tassel against his cheek as they kissed. “I want you,” he said, only he knowing how much of an admission that was, for that sullen hardness between them to fall.

“Yes,” Wing said the word an offering, and he tipped his head back for a kiss.

Drift ducked down, burying himself in the exposed throat, the smell of it, the sleek contact of cables under his eager mouth, his hands grasping at the wings.

Wing trembled against him, and then pulled away. “The door,” he managed, his vents rough with desire. “I should…”

Drift nodded, loosening his grip to let Wing turn away to secure the door, but the turn of the back, jeweled and vulnerable and beautiful, was too much for him not to take advantage of. As Wing closed the door, he wrapped himselfaround the jet, pressing his chassis against the ornately painted back, the stretched wings warm and alive against him, under the ornate swirls of the wing stalls. He shifted back a klik, pulling Wing away from the door, one hand flipping up the white skirting panel before pressing close again, pushing his pelvic armor against the jet’s aft.

Wing rocked back against him, wings shivering in their stalls.

“Beautiful,” Drift murmured, in a daze, the sentence finishing at last. The word he’d come here to say, the word it was desperately important for Wing to hear. 

Wing squirmed against him, arching his spinal struts, sliding his interface hatch against Drift’s in open invitation.

Drift’s grin of triumph was buried in the back of Wing’s neck, his mouth hungry to touch the jet, as one hand slid between Wing’s thighs to release their interface equipment.His spike jutted between their legs, and he caught Wing’s sudden glance down, feeling the lubricant slickness on his inner thighs, and then the sudden sharp vent of air as Wing saw the spike, a quiver of eagerness running through him.

It was wrong and exquisitely, perfectly right for their first time to be like this: Wing, jeweled and distant, rich and beautiful, and Drift, barely restrained in his need, hands trembling and eager, touching a thing more beautiful than he could imagine existing.

“Careful!” Wing whispered as Drift nosed his spike toward the valve.

Drift gave a quiet, rough laugh, curling his hips forward to sink his spike in the valve’s warm depths. He clutched at Wing’s body, under the wings, just _feeling_ , for a moment, his frame against Wing’s, his spike sunk deep into Wing’s valve, filling the warm snugness.

He stayed still long enough for the moment to rise against him, as the calipers of the valve spiraled down against him, sending ripples of pleasure through him until he could no longer stand to stay still.He began thrusting into the valve, long, sharp strokes, tugging Wing’s hips against him.The jewels clattered and tinkled from the motion, in a gentle chiming that merely inflamed Drift’s desire.He sped up, driving toward release, Wing shifting his feet backwards, arching his back, deepening the angle. Drift gave a quiet growl, satisfied and aroused, optics half-lidded, lost in the tingling heat and pressure and slide of his spike in the slick valve.“Beautiful,” he whispered, almost an accusation as much as a word lambent with desire and possession.

Wing didn’t respond, at least not with words, giving a series of sharp, short little whimpering moans in tempo with Drift’s increasingly demanding thrusts.

Drift stopped abruptly, clapping a hand over Wing’s mouth, pulling the jet’s back against his belly.

“Quiet,” he hissed, his own cooling systems venting in quiet gusts of air between their bodies. They froze, Wing trembling against him, listening to the muffled thuds of footsteps outside, and a voice calling ‘Wing? Wing? You’re needed soon.’

Wing shifted, his mouth moving under Drift’s fingers.Drift began moving, slowly, dragging his spike in and out of the valve, enough to deprive Wing of words, the jet trembling and shivering against him.

The footsteps, and the voice, receded.Drift picked up his pace again, releasing his hand from Wing’s mouth. “Quickly,” Wing said, his voice pleading, desperate, torn between two desires, but choosing this, wanting to stay here, wanting Drift to keep driving into him, the Decepticon’s mouth biting down on his collar armor. He could feel the overload coming, as though from a distance, roaring at him all the more forcefully for the delay. His hips pistoned against Wing, the raised skirting panel scraping his belly, his thighs sliding against Wing’s, hands desperate on the jet.The jewelry clattered and clashed, losing all rhythm, to a frantic, trembling crescendo of noise.

Wing arched up, a sharp, short little cry bursting from his vocalilzer just as Drift’s spike jolted in his valve, a scalding liquid burst of transfluid filling his valve. Drift drove himself in, so deep that he took most of Wing’s weight, the jet impaled on his spike.

Wing softened against him, the spinal struts releasing into a quivering tenderness, and Drift released the sharp bite, licking almost apologetically at the collar armor he’d nipped, hot transfluid slicking down their thighs. “Drift,” Wing whispered, his voice tremulous, his hands coming to rest on Drift’s, wrapped around his body.

Drift couldn’t think, couldn’t move, for a long moment, just rapt in the pleasure beyond what he’d known before.He was hardly a virgin but he’d never felt anything like this almost jelly-like quiver around his spark as he held Wing, and the spiking felt less like a conquest than some sort of sacrament. He wanted words to come, to find some way to express this. Maybe Wing would understand, maybe he wouldn’t, but he wanted to try.“Wing. I—“

The door snapped open before them, and the space beyond it was filled, abruptly, with blue and gold and a dour frown.“Wing!” Dai Atlas drowned out whatever words Drift might have come up with. “What is the meaning of this?”

Wing started, rigid, in Drift’s arms, the gems rattling, a quick clatter of alarm. “Dai Atlas. I was….”

“You were dallying with this…,” a snarl, “Decepticon.”

Drift growled, jerking his spike forcefully from Wing’s valve, hard enough to cause Wing to yelp, the tender mood shredded and jagged, mocking him with memory. Softness. Weakness. Pathetic.

“Dai Atlas,” Wing said, sheepishly swiping at his thighs, smearing the silver trail of transfluid ineffectually. “It was an act of pleasu—“

“Rutting,” Dai Atlas said, coldly.“Base rutting.And in this.” He pinched one of the wing stalls with distaste. “Defilement. Desecration.”

“Dai Atlas,” Wing began again, cut off by Drift, shoving him aside.

“I don’t need you to defend me, Wing,” he snapped, more stung by Wing’s worried calmness than Dai Atlas’s judgment.But he should have known better: Wing wouldn’t stand up for him. Wing was probably glad they’d been caught, Drift shamed, weak.

Drift bent, slamming his interface hatch closed, and shoved his way past Dai Atlas, moving him bodily.

“Drift!” Wing cried out, trying to pass Dai Atlas himself,before his wing was gripped, painfully, by the Circle’s leader. “Where are you going?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Dai Atlas said, darkly.

Drift certainly wasn’t, stumbling out of the vestibule into the too-bright lights of the street outside, wanting for the first time in his life the anonymous darkness of the gutters.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermaths and consequences.

 

Wing knelt, in the posture of submission, before Dai Atlas. The jewels still gleamed in the light, unmoving save for a small tremble, the only betrayal of his emotion, as he bowed his head before the larger mech’s wrath.  

“Shameful,” Dai Atlas spat.  “A desecration of our most holy rite.” 

Wing cycled a shaky breath. He had no excuse to offer, other than that Drift had come to him, ablaze with want, and he’d seen, for the first time, the bitter walls Drift erected between himself and everything start to break down. The gentle, almost apologetic licks along the back of his neck still tingled, a reminder of something newborn and shy. And all he could think about was that he’d lost that.

“It was no desecration,” Axe said, behind Wing.  “It was an act of love.”

“Love?” Dai Atlas’s voice shattered the word. “They were going at it like beasts.” 

“And _you_ ’ve never been overcome,” Axe said, pointedly, hinting at some knowledge he had, throwing a dart that struck home.

“It was different,” Dai Atlas said. “Drift is a Decepticon.  You yourself said so, that he had the power to contaminate us with his very presence, his ways.”

“Or we with ours,” Axe said. “How do you know that’s not what’s happened? And wouldn’t that be a blessing of Primus, indeed, to spare one more soul from the ravages of war?”

Wing lifted his head, minutely, tinily hopeful. 

Dai Atlas grunted, turning away. “It doesn’t change that Wing should know better. He flouts our laws.”

Axe had no response to that. He couldn’t: it was true, and they all three knew it.

“I will abide by your judgment,” Wing said, his voice quiet but steady.  “If I have erred in the law, in my spark I was doing right and I will pay the penalty.”

A look, exchanged by the other mechs over him, a silent negotiation, before Dai Atlas said, stiffly, “You will.”

He expected nothing less: Dai Atlas was nothing if not ruthlessly fair. And Axe had done more than he needed to, defending Wing.  The memory was a beautiful ache in Wing’s frame, a moment he held only once and for a short time, like a droplet of sweetest dew. 

[***]

Drift crouched in the darkness inside Wing’s quarters. He’d thought of leaving, his entire system storming with fury and shame at Dai Atlas’s cutting insult, at his own action—interfacing with the enemy, his captor. He wanted to leave. He knew he should, but somehow, his feet had brought him back here, instead. Maybe he’d thought he’d have it out with Wing, berate him for not standing up to Dai Atlas. Maybe he just wanted more, without the intoxicant swirling through his system.

Whatever he’d thought he wanted was irrelevant: Wing wasn’t here. The rooms were dark and echoing, as though the scene from earlier—was it still the same day?—of the bustle of mechs fitting the jeweled wing stalls and drawing on the painted designs and the brightness and Wing’s smile, as though none of that had ever happened. He could still smell the paint, the last whiffs of metal polish, but they seemed stale and thin, now, just enough to remind him of what he hadn’t appreciated at the time.

The night stretched on, the underground city’s false lights darkened, and still he was alone, leaning against the wall in Wing’s room, not the small closet they’d set up for him. He couldn’t be there now: the berth and the small table, conscientiously arranged with snacks and a small datapad and other little luxuries, seemed to mock him.

He didn’t want them. That wasn’t what had brought him back. He didn’t want trinkets or pricy fancy food. He wanted….

…he didn’t know what he wanted.

The door to the main room opened, and he went on alert, audio straining.

It was Wing: his footsteps, but slow, heavy. Drift stayed where he was, optics narrowing to small blue slits in the darkness.

A darker shape, shadow in shadow, in the doorframe: Wing, holding the frame for a moment with a heavy sigh.

Drift waited, low and silent, for Wing to notice him. 

The jet didn’t.  Wing looked over his shoulder, across the narrow hallway to the room that was Drift’s, and gave a heavy sigh.

Drift bristled, feeling the weight of it. Right. So he was a burden.  And he’d come back…just to find that out. Was it closure? Yes. Just not any of the ones he’d thought of.

Wing moved into the room, without turning on the light—a small mercy—and flung himself on the berth, curling into a ball of wings and the projections of his flight stabilizers.  Drift felt a pang at his spark, another pain of another kind, but he forced himself still, forced himself to wait until Wing had slipped into recharge, before he levered himself up, and slipped out of the room, his optics shadowed and unhappy.

[***]

“Do you want another?” Wing asked, pushing to his feet.  It was days after the ceremony, and Wing had dragged Drift, protesting, to a streetside café. From the café, music wafted through the streets, filled with vendors and artisans and mechs bustling around, some to buy, some merely to look.

And there was Drift, arms folded over his chassis, glowering. “I’m fine.” Things had been tense between them since then, even more than usual, both circling each other warily, as though waiting for the other to strike.

Wing gave an uneven smile. “I’ll get you one, then. Maybe a different flavor.”

What made it worse, Drift thought, picking up the white cup, half-full of cooling blue tea, was that Wing was trying so hard. His manners impeccable, his words always courteous and patient.  But there was that distance between them, that grew wider every night, when Wing left him, never telling him where or why, only to return cycles later, wrung out and exhausted.  Drift had confronted him once, the only answer an enigmatic smile and a gentle stroke over his helm.

He scowled, putting the cup back on the table, as though even its sweetness was an affront. Drift let his optics scour the crowd, before glancing back to the door to the café.

He caught two mechs, seated at another table, staring at him. The hard kind of stare he remembered from the gutters. The kind that didn’t drop when it was caught.

“What.” He bristled, sitting upright.

One turned away, showily dismissive. “Nothing.”

The other continued staring, a green and gold ground frame.  Drift bristled. “What,” he repeated, moving to the edge of the seat. All of his frustration began to seethe from its low simmer. 

“Decepticon,” the green one said.

“Yes,” Drift said.

“I was from Vos.”

Vos. Drift shrugged. Early in the war, one of the first real triumphs. What did the mech expect? An apology? 

“Is that all you have to say?” the mech said, hand curling into a fist.  “An entire city destroyed and you can’t even say you’re sorry?”

“I’m not.”

“Recoil.” The other mech who had been staring laid a hand on the green and gold banded wrist. “That was a long time ago.”

“It doesn’t change anything.” Recoil’s frown turned into a snarl.

Drift shrugged again. “I’m a soldier. I do my job.”

“And raping Wing. Was that your job, too?”

Drift leapt to his feet, the chair screeching against the ground, his hands already in fists as he lunged toward the other mech.

Silence swallowed the entire street as Drift hauled the other mech up by his collar armor, thrusting the other out of his way with a flat palm.  “What did you say?” Drift snarled,  his face inches from Recoil’s. 

“You,” the gold face was flat with hostility. “raped Wing. During the ceremony.”

Drift felt his vents come too fast, heaving and deep.  That…wasn’t what had happened. Wing hadn’t given any sign he hadn’t wanted it. He’d said yes. He’d said yes. The world seemed to spin under his feet, as if he'd drunk more of that intoxicant.

“We all know it,” the other mech said. “Everyone.  We just don’t know why Wing still puts up with you.”

Drift roared, feeling the resentment, fueled by rage, boil over in him. He swung, one fist contacting the taller mech’s face, his other hand still hanging onto Recoil’s collar armor.  He swung the green mech forward, to drive his head into his friend’s. 

A retaliation—a fist against him, a foot driving into his chassis. But these were mechs, not knights, and Drift was a warrior with millions of years of combat. It wasn’t even close. He didn’t even remember what he did, giving into the haze of red that always welcomed him at the battlefield, until he felt arms lock around his body, hauling him off. Even then, he thrashed, even when the arms holding him lifted him bodily off the ground. 

“Easy, Drift,” a voice rumbled in his ear.  “Don’t make it worse.”

“Worse!” he managed, struggling. “Worse?  I didn’t start this.”

“That’ll be settled. Now, are you going to behave?”

Drift’s face flattened, but he knew the offer. “Yeah. Fine.” He sucked in a vent of air, relaxing, until Axe lowered him to his feet.  The grip loosened around his chassis, but didn’t entirely let him go.  Probably wise, Drift admitted.  He forced himself to look around.

Recoil lay immobile on the ground, his armor dented, and splattered with the purple of energon. And the other mech, one he heard a medic crouching over him call ‘Wave’, was nursing a broken hip joint. Drift gave a shrug, grinning ferally. Not bad. And justified.

Until he saw Wing, standing, open-mouthed with horror.

His grin wavered.

“Wing,” he said.

Wing looked at him, then away, his optics back on Recoil and Wave. As if Drift didn't matter. As if they were right. The rejection hit him like a blow, the first one to really land.

Axe seemed to sense the rise of something between them, tense and awful and raw. “Are you injured, lad? Hurt anywhere?”

Drift shook his head, numb. “No,” he said, his optics still vainly trying to get Wing’s attention. “Not injured.”  But he did hurt, inward, where he didn’t think any medic could reach.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things fall apart.

 

Drift slumped sullenly in the chair, while Dai Atlas and Axe yelled around him.  This? This was ridiculous.  A little fight—not even his fault—and they were in an uproar like he’d murdered someone.

Not that that thought hadn’t crossed his mind. 

You know what, though? That was this place. Everything was his fault, nothing was theirs.  Probably how they kept this whole fiction of being perfect and wonderful going.

Wing sat across from him, optics studying his slim black hands, the red blades of his stabilizers cutting the air between them.

Right, Drift thought.  Lie about what happened and you can’t even look me in the face.

“All I’m saying, Dai Atlas, is that he was provoked.”

“Provoked.”  Dai Atlas let the word roll in his mouth like something he wasn’t entirely sure he liked the flavor of. 

“He’s been here weeks and this is the first time. You have to think that something set him off.” 

Drift shot a glare at Wing, who seemed to shrink even further in his seat, pinions on his nacelles slicked back. Set him off? You think? And if he was so damn uncontrollable, why wasn’t he lunging at Wing right now, for lying. Who else would put that story out?

Dai Atlas paced behind Drift’s chair. “And the injuries.” Neat little change of subject, Drift thought.

“Recoil sustained some facial damage, a broken wrist joint, and a compressed fuel cable.  Wave, the hip.  They’ll be up and around in a day or so.”

“Don’t minimize it.”  Dai Atlas leaned forward, hands slamming hard on the sides of Drift’s chair. “You hear what you’ve done?”

Drift glowered. “I shut them up. Someone needed to.”  Beginning and end of story, as far as he was concerned.

“You assaulted them,” Dai Atlas’s voice boomed over his shoulder, deliberately jarring.

Drift shrugged. “Same difference.”

“Drift,” Axe intervened. “That’s not our way.”

“It’s _my_ way.”  He caught Wing’s frown, and almost gave a laugh, bitter and dark as old oil.  Wing, who spent –used to spend—his afternoons sparring with Drift, suddenly getting huffy about violence.  Hypocrites, the lot of them.

Hnh. Why was he even surprised?

The hands gripping the back of his chair released suddenly.  “I told you,” Dai Atlas said, aiming his voice at his counterpart, “It wouldn’t work. He can’t learn.”

“Won’t,” Drift corrected. The fury in his chassis, from the accusation that had still gotten unaddressed, unanswered, as though the assault was all that mattered and what they’d insinuated—said—about Wing and he was a matter already settled.

“Drift,” Wing said, his voice soft, subdued.

Drift glared back, then pushed abruptly to his feet.  “Done here.” Nothing was going to happen. More talking. More blaming Drift for everything.  He’d had enough.  The last thing he needed was Wing trying some gentle sympathy with him.

He expected a fight, if only just on general principles, from Dai Atlas, but the large mech stood out of his way. “You do not leave the city,” he said, coldly, as Drift passed him.

Drift spun, snarling, his fists tight balls aching to strike.  A scorching retort was burning its way up his vocalizer when he felt a cool hand on his wrist. Wing.  “Please,” Wing said, his optics coruscating with something moving under the surface. “I’d like to speak to you. Later.” That polite, lilting formality Drift knew all too well.  And hated, because he had no counter to it.

He jerked his arm away. “Fine. _Fine_.” He didn’t want to be here anyway, with Dai Atlas’s hard hostility, Axe’s avuncular understanding, and Wing’s plush manners and none of them dealing with what the fragging problem was.

Fine. Whatever.  This air was choking, noxious. He pushed under Dai Atlas’s arm, hating nothing so much as himself.

[***]

“I told you,” Dai Atlas rounded on Axe before the door even swung its heavy weight shut behind Drift.  “I told you he was untrainable. Irredeemable.”

“Everyone is redeemable,” Wing said, fervently, uncowed even when Dai Atlas glowered at him. “Everyone.”

“He assaulted two citizens, Wing.  He could have killed Recoil.”

“Something must have happened to provoke him,” Wing said. “He wouldn’t just attack someone.”

“Words,” Dai Atlas said. “Words are no incitement to violence to anyone other than a follower of Megatron.”

“Dai Atlas,” Axe said. “We don’t know that.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Dai Atlas said.  “This is hardly his first recalcitrance. As you well know.”

The pinions flared and drooped.  “Yes,” Wing said, his voice suddenly small, drained of vehemence.

“When will you stop taking his penalties for him?” Dai Atlas asked, his own voice softening. The only sign, the only trace of emotion.  Wing’s face set.  Dai Atlas, one hand half-outstretched, let it drop to his side again. “Wing,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you at least tell him?”

Wing turned aside, the shadow from the door falling over his face.

Dai Atlas opened his mouth to speak, but Axe covered his wrist with one large hand. “Dai Atlas,” Axe said, mildly. “Wing has made his choice.  A knight has a right to have that respected.”

Dai Atlas frowned, but after a long moment, gave a gruff nod. “It is your choice. And your responsibility.”  A ping on his datapad. “Ah.”  His frown deepened. “The surgical mapping of Recoil’s and Wave’s injuries has arrived.”

Wing cycled a breath, shaking his head. No, he didn’t want to look. He’d know soon enough, when they replicated the injuries on his own frame: the penalty for assault.  He’d know enough, then.

[***]

An empty berth. Drift’s hand squeezed the metal frame of the door to Wing’s room hard enough for the metal to groan in protest.  He’d been an obedient little possession, tied by the words, ‘I’d like to speak to you’ like a leash, and he’d gone back to Wing’s quarters, and waited.

And waited. 

And the day had stretched into night, and he’d waited. And waited.  And finally exhaustion and frustration overcame him, and he’d stretched out cautiously on his berth, expecting any instant to be jolted awake by the sound of the door opening, keeping him on the very fringes of recharge.

And now. 

Day had come, the city awash in its simulated sunshine, throwing long shapes across the floor of the main room, through his articulated balcony windows. And the berth was still empty. Wing hadn’t come home. At all.

And the truth of it hit him: Wing had probably told people that story that he’d been violated, and now that he’d assaulted those poor, sweet, innocent citizens. Wing had probably let them think it, feeding on the sympathy and playing at this pseudo friendship with Drift. Because they weren't friends: he was a captive, and he had forgotten that--let himself forget it--for far too long. 

Because, yeah, they can’t do anything wrong, mechs here in Crystal City. It’s always the Decepticon.

Hnh. Wonder who they blamed before I got here, he thought, staring at the empty berth.  Something swept through him, like a sheet of fire whipped by the wind: resentment and anger and abandonment and the feeling of humiliated stupidity that he’d been had, taken in, led down a pretty path like a pitcher-plant trap. 

No. No more. He’d had enough. He could feel it reach him, vibrating up from the soles of his footplates as though coming from the core of the planet itself, the desire—no, the need—to move, to break free of the sticky, dysfunctional net.

He stared at the berth for another long moment, optics hard, as though willing Wing there, like a last chance, before he tore himself away. 

Momentum took over, pushing against inertia, and he moved to the tiny room Wing had called ‘his’ and grabbed the snacks, shoving them in his storage compartment, before heading toward the door.

He didn’t look back. Not this time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things that try to pull away find themselves flung together

 

Wing was running a hand over his new hip, taking one or two experimental steps, when Axe slipped into the Medibay. Wing gave an exhausted smile. The penalty had gone long, and the repairs even longer. The last of the sensor block was fading, leaving him with a by-now all-too-familiar ache over his net. 

Axe held out an enriched energon packet. “Look like you could use it, lad.”

Wing held the ration in his hands. “Thank you, as always, for your kindness, Axe.” 

“The law is the law,” Axe said, mildly, “but in my mind, it should always be tempered with a bit of mercy.” He rested a large, soothing hand on Wing’s shoulder. 

The pressure felt good, grounding him.  Wing cracked open the packet, squeezing it into his mouth. He let his optics float closed as the nutrients hit his systems.  It had been a long night for them all and all he wanted to do was curl into a ball and recharge. 

“Dai Atlas asked a good question,” Axe said. “Why don’t you tell Drift?”

Wing bought time with another swallow of energon. “Because the world he comes from is filled with violence and pain already. I want him to see something different.”  If he could see it, just once, for what it was, Drift would want to stay here, want to be here and maybe, he’d be willing to let down his guard. 

“You can’t take all his pain from him, Wing.” The hand stroked the pinions, sleeking them back like feathers.

“I know,” Wing said, his voice wistful. Wing remembered, vividly, the way Drift had looked at him, during the ceremony, the way his hands trembled with reverence over Wing’s body, the way his voice shivered with emotion. He wanted that Drift again, now that he had seen him.

A soft chime on Axe’s comm, and his optics went half-distant with the air of a mech listening to an important message.

The smile faded at Axe’s expression, his brow furrowing under his helm. “Drift.”

Axe shook his head. “Wing. He’s…,” he sighed.

“Gone?” The gold optics tilted with worry. 

“We’ve sealed the exits. There was an attempted breach.” Another pause, as he listened for more. “They have him.” His mouth thinned, and Wing could read altogether too much into that frown. Drift had put up a fight. 

A sigh, rattling and weary, from his frame.

“Wing. You don’t have to take this one for him.  Please.”

“Axe.” A patient smile. “Why are we punishing someone for being unhappy? How could that ever work?”

“Wing,” Axe protested, but let it fade. What, after all, could he say? 

But in all of that he had  a sudden glimmering of an idea.

[***]

“You could let me go!” Drift snarled like a feral thing, throwing himself against the force bars.  Crystal City didn’t have a jail or a brig, so they’d had to hastily erect something with construction barriers in the corner of a disused room in the Council Hall. 

“We could,” Axe said, reasonably. “But with what assurance that you wouldn’t betray us?”

Drift growled, acknowledging, grudgingly, the logic. Though, who’d want some stupid city filled with weak pacifists? 

“So you keep me here, forever.”  He paced in the cage, battered from his attempt at resistance. “At least Wing promised me freedom, if I ever beat him.”

Axe couldn’t repress the chuckle. “No one has beaten him, Drift.” False hope, if that’s what Drift’s hope was. But it gave him an idea. “I have a proposition for you, then.”

Drift cursed, flinging himself onto the narrow berth. “Not interested.”

“You haven’t even heard it,” Axe said, stepping closer. “Surely you can’t be so busy sulking that you can’t even hear me out.”

Drift bridled at the word, stung, but it had its effect. Axe knew enough of Wing’s methods to know that one needed to get Drift’s attention.  “Fine. What.”

“I want to show you something. One thing. A cycle of your time, no more. And then, if you like, you can leave.” He smiled, showing open palms.

“Right. You’ll just let me leave.”  He could almost smell the doubt.  And the waver. 

“I’ll escort you to the surface myself,” Axe said.

“For a cycle of my time.”

“And a promise—on your honor—“ he noticed how that word seemed to sting, too, “that you will not betray our location.”

Drift sat up, staring at Axe, studying his face for some trace of deception, some hint of a trick. There was none.  “Fine. One cycle.”

Axe nodded, moving to the barrier controls.  “Everything worth gaining,” he murmured, as if to convince himself, “is worth a risk.”

[***]

“The Penance Hall,” Axe said, his voice hushed, even before he pushed open the arched doors into the room.  They were on the second tier, above the Penance floor itself, a holdover from the days they’d believed penalties needed to be public to be real.  He heard the crackle of the shockrod, and a cry of pain, watching Drift’s face, intently.

The brow furrowed under the helm, Drift pushing past him to the railing and then going shocked still. 

Axe stepped up beside him.

“Wing.”

“Yes.”  Another crackle of electricity, casting white-blue flickers of light on the walls, and then another long cry of agony. Drift flinched, visibly, as though the pain hadn’t meant anything to him, until he’d realized it was attached to Wing.

“What,” Drift said, his voice low and dangerous, “is this.”

“Our justice.”

“Justice.” Drift sneered. “And you all claim to be so much better than we are.”

“Drift.” A hand on the smaller mech’s shoulder. Drift shrugged it off, angrily.

Below,  the mech lowered the shockrod, and murmured a word.  Wing, his wrists bound overhead to a high pole, shivered, nodded, and then extended one of his wings, shakily. Drift hadn’t seen the wings unfurled since…that day and he could feel his spark pulse at the sight.  “What’s he going to do?”

“Break the main strut,” Axe murmured.

“No,” Drift breathed. His optics darted to Axe’s face, as though checking to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. It was the penalty for attempted escape, the penalty Drift would have borne.

“He accepts it,” Axe said. 

Drift snorted, tearing his arm away. “I don’t.”  He flung the words over his shoulder as he vaulted the railing, bursting into movement so fast that Axe couldn’t have stopped him even if he’d wanted to. 

Drift landed on the supplicor, the shockrod clattering from his hands. Drift snatched it up, swinging it down on the mech’s helm.  The supplicor cried out, as the shock activated over his neural net. 

“Back off!” Drift snarled, stepping off the mech, swinging the shockrod in an arc, his back to Wing’s shaking frame. “This ends. Now.”

“Drift!”  Dai Atlas barked, rising from a seat. It was one of his duties, one he didn’t enjoy, to supervise these penalties. 

“Try it,” Drift snarled, dropping to a crouch. “You want to see what a Decepticon can do when he really wants to?”

Axe dropped down beside Dai Atlas, his thrusters breaking his fall. “No, Drift. We don’t. But what do you want?” 

Drift growled, his optics flicking back at Wing. “Him. Down. Repaired. Now.”

Axe nodded to one of the chevroned mechs, who had been waiting to the side. Penance was never done without a medic on duty. Especially not one as fragile as wing-breaking.

The medic started forward, warily, optics on Drift.

Drift sidled out of the way, his attention divided. “You hurt him…,” Drift tipped the shockrod meaningfully.

“I heal,” said the medic, stiffly, reaching to release the binding from Wing’s wrists. 

Drift grunted,  pedaled backward, trying to keep everyone in his gaze. His optics sought Wing’s.  “All right?”

A wan smile. “Drift, you shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, say that a lot about myself,” Drift said, something like a black smile on his lip plates.  

“What are you doing?” The gold optics seemed hazy, unfocused from pain.

Drift pinioned the medic. “Sensor blocks.”

“I know my job, “ the medic said, but he reached for another of the small devices.

“Saving you,” Drift said, returning his attention to Wing.  “This makes us even.”

A weird, wobbly smile. “Does it?”

[***]

Drift woke, feeling a sensation of warmth and weight over his body. His optics onlined, his physical sensors mapping the contact of another mech against his: a foreign sensation. He hadn’t recharged with another mech in ages, keeping carefully to his small room. Until now: he was tangled with Wing, the other’s frame heated from autorepair, the face nuzzled into his shoulder. 

Memory floated back to him: taking Wing out of that place, carrying him gently back to his berth. The shockrod, now propped in the corner, some hedge against…he couldn’t remember what. Wing’s arms, clinging around his shoulders, the soft, hurt voice pleading him to stay. 

He shouldn’t stay. This place was diseased, sick. And it was affecting him.  What did he care about any of this? Why had Wing’s pain bothered him? He shouldn’t care. It was weak. Pathetic. And above all, not his problem. 

Still, there was some strange warmth, that had nothing to do with the jet’s autorepair, over his spark as he held Wing’s frame, one hand stroking over the folded wing, the strut that had almost been shattered. 

A soft sound, and a slide of armor over his, and the delicate warmth of optics onlining against him.  Wing’s face turned upward, optics lidded and drowsy, one hand stroking down Drift’s chassis. “Drift. You…?”

He turned his face away, at a loss for words.  “Yeah,” he managed, his voice a croak.  He frowned. “The frag were you doing?”

“Penance,” Wing said.

“For what.”  Disbelieving, flat.

A lopsided smile. “Various things.”

Drift had the distinct feeling Wing was holding something back.  “They were going to break your wings.  What the frag is that the penance for?”

The smile crumpled like an old fender.  “Escape.” 

“Es—“ He couldn’t even finish the word. Realization, recognition, hit him like a cannonburst to the chestplating. He could almost feel it driving him onto the berth.  Escape. His escape.  Wing was taking punishment meant for him, for his misdeeds.

A flare of anger, like oxyacetylene.  “Shouldn’t.”

“Drift.”  Wing shifted atop him, sliding his chassis over Drift’s and for a moment the friction and charge of the movement was all Drift could process: sensual, intimate, close.  “Why did you leave?”

His mouth twitched. “I don’t belong here.”

“You can, though.” The gold optics, edges fuzzed with the last of the sensor block.

“No one wants me here.” He could hear the self-pity in his own voice, loathed it. Weaness. Pathetic.  A whole host of adjectives of repudiation.

“I do,” Wing said, his mouth curved like a cradle of sorrow. “Everything I’ve done is because I want you to be happy.”

Drift pulled away, the moment suddenly too intimate, too intense, and he was all too aware of how entirely ill-equipped he was for any of it.

“Can I ask about Recoil?”

It took a moment for the name to seep through his self-hatred.  He was glad he’d pulled away, suddenly. “You,” he said. “What you told them I did to you.”

“What you did to me?” Open confusion, and Drift felt fingers of doubt comb over him. Did Wing really not know or was he just acting?

His mouth hardened. Fine. He’d say the words. Spit them like an accusation, shatter the last brittle vestiges of the mood between them. “I raped you.”

The gold optics flew wide. “No.” 

Drift snorted, looking away. Know what? It was time to get up. It only hurt to lie here, Wing in his arms.  He was tired of hurting.  

Wing’s hand found his shoulder as he tried to sit up. “Drift. No.  You didn’t. And I never—I wouldn’t.” He seemed, for once, at a loss for words. “Drift. I wanted it.  So much.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He scowled against the tugging over his spark.  He didn’t belong here doing this…stuff. He should be fighting.  

“It does matter.” Adamant, the voice, and a hand turned Drift’s chin to face him, guiding his backframe back to the berth.  “It does,” Wing said, before removing any possibility of retort with a kiss, his mouth meeting Drift’s, tingling and electric. 

They hadn’t kissed before and the contact, sudden and sweet, overwhelmed Drift for a moment, his lipplates startled, his ventilation catching in his systems. 

Wing slithered over him, the sleek thighs straddling his hips,  and for a moment their interface hatches bumped together. Drift couldn’t suppress the gasp, his hands clutching over the jet’s arms. 

Wing broke the kiss with a smile. “And I do want you,” he said, the word a shimmer of energy and emotion between them, as his hand reached between them, to those hatches. 

Drift’s hips bucked up as his spike released, turgid and wanting, slick with lubricant.  Wing curled his palm around it, sliding down its length as he shifted his own weight.  Drift gave a choked sound, strangled with desire, as Wing’s valve settled over his spike, snug and slick and eager.

Wing pushed back, half sitting, one palm, sticky with lubricant, on Drift’s chestplate. His knees squeezed at Drift’s body, tight against his ribs, as he began riding, slowly, in a long, circular sweep, his valve over Drift’s spike. His optics glowed down at Drift, like twin suns, his mouth parted in an exquisite shape Drift didn’t want to ruin by pulling it down to a kiss.  “You,” Wing breathed, as though the word was an effort, and the only thing that needed to be said.

Drift’s hands found the beautiful arcs of the thighs, feeling the metal rise and fall, surge and ebb under his palms. Not controlling, just…feeling Wing’s body against his. And it was something more than physical: Wing seemed haloed in a hazy light, as though he were larger than his frame, glowing with an invisible glow, and the arch of his mouth seemed to be the horizon and the cup of the moon and everything beautiful and sublime and good in this world. 

He felt the climax rushing toward him, something golden and divine, and all he could do, for a long moment, was throw his head back, venting air, fingers clinging to the white skirting panels, and hope he would not be swept away by the fierce wave of ecstasy.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue

 

Axe settled into the café’s larger chairs, settling his Great Sword in a gap between the back and the seat.  The street fair was over, but there was always time, at the end of the day, to enjoy a good drink with a good friend.  He raised his white cup in a toast to Dai Atlas, who returned the gesture with a murmured blessing in Primal Vernacular. 

The tea was warm and soothing, the nutrients just what a mech needed to clear the processor.  He gave a contented sigh, letting his optics roam down the street.  Nothing quite like, honestly, working to make a city of peace and contentment and getting to see, and sample, the fruits of it: mechs in animated clusters, drinking, talking, reading. It was a satisfaction that could match nothing else.

Dai Atlas’s optics fixed on a couple strolling down the other side of the street: Wing and Drift. 

Axe grinned. “Been three days. About time they surfaced.” He’d checked on them once, heard the low moan and high, sweet keening that had told him all he needed to know about what was going on behind the door. Making up for lost time, he figured.

Across the street, they found a free table.  Wing glossed a hand over Drift’s shoulder, leaning in for a kiss before turning to the service area.  Drift stood, loose and almost puzzled, his optics trailing after Wing, as though memorizing the elegant sway of his steps, before coming to himself with a jerk and settling, awkwardly, into a chair.

Dai Atlas’s mouth pinched, dour.  “It’s quite a favor you called in,” he said.

“Saving you from yourself, you mean,” Axe teased. Dai Atlas had a reason to be hard, but Axe knew more often than not he regretted those times when harshness edged into cruelty.

Wing returned, carrying two cups, laying them with a flourish on the table before seating himself next to Drift. And then, optics glinting with something like mischief, he hooked his leg up, to rest it over Drift’s knee, the red blade of the stabilizer slicing the air between them.  It was an intimate gesture, one that announced to any onlooker that the two were close.  Ah, Axe thought. So that’s how he refutes the rumors.

Drift looked over, startled.  Wing said something, his voice inaudible from this distance, but the laugh that followed was not: high and merry and genuine. And for what seemed the first time, a smile, halting and stiff, spread on Drift’s face.

Dai Atlas took a sip of his tea, forcing a vent of air.  “I suppose I’ll have to let it stand, then. Though I fear the consequences.”  As Dai Atlas saw it, Wing’s penalty hadn’t been completed, so there was injustice, imbalance. 

If, Axe thought, the world worked like an accountant’s spreadsheet. But Primus was a warrior god, not an account keeper, and the Guiding Hand had been there to guide, not batter. 

Drift leaned forward, reaching for the cup on the small wrought metal table, his other hand shyly coming to rest on Wing’s thigh, just above the knee, fingertips curling into the joint. Another intimate touch, something joining them. 

“Consequences,” Axe murmured.  Across the street, the pair caught sight of he and Dai Atlas. They were large mechs, after all, hard to miss. Wing waved.  Axe raised his own cup in a salute.  “If the point of punishment is to alter behavior, Dai Atlas, what more could you ask for?”


End file.
